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Transition to Microsoft Office 2007
How to Get Started and Get Help
Microsoft has released an unprecedented number of free tools to help you learn the new Office 2007 interface and get you up to speed without leaving your desk.
What's New There are many ways that you can start learning how the new Office 2007 differs from Office 2003. Here are just a few on-line guides, demos, and tutorials that will provide a great start:
- Fluent User Interface Video See the streamlined Microsoft Office Fluent user interface in action. This video gives you a detailed look at how this interface will make it easier to find and use the features you need to get the results you want.
- Fluent
User Interface Demo In this demo you'll use the
Ribbon, Contextual Tabs, Galleries, and Live Preview to quickly
and easily get professional results in Microsoft Office Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook. You’ll also
see side-by-side comparisons with previous versions of the
applications that shows how much easier it is to get things
done with the Office Fluent user interface.
- Office 2007 Overview Requires Office 2007 installed to complete tutorials. Two self-paced lessons and two practice sessions for hands-on experience.
- xml File Format Word, Excel and PowerPoint files saved in Office 2007 are saved in xml (Extensible Markup Language) format. There are many benefits of this format but for most users the big thing is that the files are smaller! Depending on whether your document is normal, contains macros, or is a template, you save your documents using a new four character extension. As before you select the file format when you save the document. Click here for a listing of all Office 2007 file formats.
Interactive Guide from 2003 to 2007 Wondering where your favorite 2003 toolbar commands are located in the new 2007 ribbon interface? Or just want to explore the rich, new design with a little guidance? Microsoft developed a visual, interactive reference guide to help you quickly learn where things are for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. These interactive guides can be viewed on-line or downloaded so that they are always available to you. Not sure whether you want to download this or not? View one of the Interactive Guides Online and see this powerful tool in action.
Word |
*Download Word Interactive Guide | View Word Interactive Guide Online |
|---|---|---|
Excel |
*Download Excel Interactive Guide | View Excel Interactive guide Online |
Outlook |
*Download Outlook Interactive Guide | View Outlook Interactive guide Online |
PowerPoint |
*Download PowerPoint Interactive Guide | View PowerPoint Interactive guide Online |
Ribbon Mapping Workbooks Still
can't find your Office 2003 command? Download these workbooks
and keep them handy. They provide a mapping of toolbars and commands
from Office 2003 to Office 2007.
| Download Access Ribbon Mapping Workbook |
Microsoft Office OnLine The
new Office
Online web site contains an area for Downloads, Clip Art,
Templates but what you will find most useful is the Help and
How-to area of the site. Help and How-to provides a variety of
training resources. View the demo to
get familiar with this web site.
Self-paced Training Courses Microsoft publishes a series of self-paced training courses that use Flash, audio, text, and interactive elements to teach all the basics, and some of the more advanced features, of the Office 2007 programs. These courses are organized by product and many of them have Quick Reference Cards that you can print out as a job aid. Some of the free courses provided cover basic training for the ribbon, basic training for efficiency tools (mainly Outlook 2007), basic training for graphics (mostly having to do with PowerPoint), and basic training for information analysis (mostly Excel). To get the most out of these self-paced training courses, read the overview of how these lessons work.
Demos Are you a quick learner or don't have the time to go through a tutorial? Microsoft has created numerous demos for each of the 2007 Office products.
Getting Started Add-ins If you would like your training to be available from within the new programs themselves, download and install a "Get Started" tab for Word 2007, Excel 2007, or PowerPoint 2007.(Contact your technical support representative if you need assistance.) Commands on this tab give you easy access to free content on Office Online, such as training courses, video demos, and other Office Online content designed to help. Office Online Community discussions are also available directly from the Get Started tab.
As you can see above, the first button on the Get Started tab is the Interactive Guide. This button links you to a web page that describes the guide and another link to view it. If you downloaded the guide earlier, you can access the guide from you computer and not from this link to the Web.
Microsoft Webcasts & Podcasts There are Microsoft live and on-demand webcasts available on a wide-variety of Office topics.
Newsletters Even good old-fashioned electronic newsletters contain lots of Office training information. Subscribe here.
Not a Microsoft Office 2007 user?
If you want Office 2007 installed, enter a Service Desk ticket so that your local IT Support Tech can see if your computer is capable of running Office 2007.
- PC Office 2003 users need to install the Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint to open the new file formats as your fellow employees start sending you files created in Office 2007.
- Mac Office 2004 users can download the Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2 (Beta). With the Office Open XML Converter, you can convert Office Open XML files to a format that is compatible with Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac and Microsoft Office v. X for Mac. You can choose to convert and open one file, or convert a large number of files.
*Requires *Adobe Flash 7.0 or later. Contact your technical support representative for assistance.